Funny and so true of every office I've ever worked for. But the author totally ignored the most controversial place of all -- the office fridge. Someone is always leaving their food to rot and stink up the whole floor, prompting someone to empty it all out... or the person who attempts to store a months worth of food in a fridge shared by 30 people... and then the food thieves!... I can only assume the author is so traumatized by the office fridge that he can't even utter it's name. The humble refrigerator door is truly where the best passive aggressive notes appear.

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"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." — Douglas Adams

I'll admit, I'm mildly annoyed by the people who don't clear the microwave time. But only mildly annoyed, because I think it's more considerate to try to leave a communal item ready for the next person to use. Which means I'm also annoyed by the person who has something cook over and make a mess, and doesn't bother to attempt to clean it up.

I'd like to add another microwave one he missed. The people who take someone else's food out of the microwave the second the timer goes off, not giving the person who is microwaving a chance to see if their lunch is fully cooked or not. (Can you tell that's happened to me? ) Alternatively, people who start cooking their food in the microwave then leave the break room, not coming back until long after their food is done cooking, thereby holding up the microwave.

My last office, this was a huge problem. It was a small, family-owned company. The owner had made it clear, many times, that she really didn't like finding dirty dishes in the sink every time she entered the kitchen. But there were several people on staff who would eat lunch, leave their dishes in the sink, and "take a break" later in the day to come back and wash them. Just a way to get out of doing 10 minutes of work. Or they forgot and didn't come back until the next day.

When we were moving to a new office building, we had the opportunity to put a dishwasher in the break room. But the owner decided that we "didn't deserve one," because of all the people who didn't wash their dishes promptly. It was such a little thing--just wash what you have dirtied.

The Thermostat Wars at my current job are brutal. One thermostat makes one office bearable, and the other untolerably hot or cold. No matter what you do, the meeting room outside my cube remains 9th-circle-of-hell-cold, and it rolls out into my cube. I wear a sweater and stay out of it.

I do eat in my cube, unless I have curry, so I am a jerk in that respect.

ETA: At my last job, people would burn their food (especially popcorn) all the time. There were all sorts of rude notes on the microwave. One day someone supposedly burned their tea... sure didn't smell like tea... more like illegal herbal supplements.

« Last Edit: October 05, 2012, 02:34:02 PM by Cat-Fu »

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“Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.” PBS

(1) People who do not clean up their messes in the microwave:I remember a student worker who put her bowl of tomato soup in the microwave where it apparently got hot enough to spill a good amount of it over onto the oven's plate. I was waiting to use it when she came up, opened the door, and just picked up her bowl and started to leave. I couldn't believe it and I was suddenly angry enough to say, "Aren't you going to clean up your own mess?" (I wanted to add a lot more that would not have been polite but refrained.) She silently got some towels and did clean it up but never spoke a word to me again. Good riddance when she finally left.

(2) People who do not clean the oven or microwave even though they use them all the time:Do people really never clean their own ovens or refrigerators at home? Or do they just think that they shouldn't have to do it at work even though they use them all the time? I swear there are some who must live with black mold in their refrigerators given their habits and unconcern at work.

My last office, this was a huge problem. It was a small, family-owned company. The owner had made it clear, many times, that she really didn't like finding dirty dishes in the sink every time she entered the kitchen. But there were several people on staff who would eat lunch, leave their dishes in the sink, and "take a break" later in the day to come back and wash them. Just a way to get out of doing 10 minutes of work. Or they forgot and didn't come back until the next day.

When we were moving to a new office building, we had the opportunity to put a dishwasher in the break room. But the owner decided that we "didn't deserve one," because of all the people who didn't wash their dishes promptly. It was such a little thing--just wash what you have dirtied.

Oh, that's a huge one here.

I'd add -- the people who microwave foods with obnoxious odors like fish, broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower.

7. The people who eat at their desks. And the food is usually messy or smelly. OR, they chew everything with their mouth open and gross out the people around them.

Guess I'm one of the jerks then. If I don't eat at my desk-I don't eat. I work 14 hour days both Spring and Fall. Sorry but I can't go 14 hours without something to eat, especially when I am doing physical labor like loading fertilizer tenders, filling anhydrous tanks and loading/unloading chemical.

In some jobs you have no choice of where you eat. It's the nature of the job to eat when and where you have a spare moment or you don't eat at all.

Burnt popcorn is bad, but I can top that. One time, one of my coworkers burnt fish in the microwave. It was more than a bad smell. It hit you right in the face when you walked down the hall, and it actually made me feel physically ill. It still smelled awful the next day (and I think I ended up spraying the hall with an odor neutralizer that we usually keep in the bathroom to get rid of the smell). It's bad enough to microwave fish at work, but it's so much worse to let it burn.